Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -2.16% may make the top-selling smart speaker on the planet, but that is just one of dozens of electronic gadgets in its portfolio. The company has a history of announcing oddball products each fall, and at Tuesday’s hardware event, streaming virtually due to the pandemic, we expect Amazon AMZN -2.16% to unveil some, alongside new additions to the popular Echo speaker family.
A four-year-old Echo Spot is one of my household’s favorite, most-used speakers. But I care less about what might eventually replace it, and more about the wackier gadgets in Amazon’s annual parade. Let’s take a look at years’ past: We saw a smart ring for whispering Alexa commands into your finger, a weirdly specific sticky-note printer that seemed actually useful and, of course, a Ring-branded security drone to fly around your house when you’re not there.
Amazon didn’t sell any of these to the masses—it hasn’t yet, anyway. But there was a time, back when Amazon released the first Echo in 2014, that an always-listening robot speaker seemed eccentric, too. Before millions of people had Alexa in their homes, it seemed more like a publicity stunt.
“It sure drives a lot of headlines,” said Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research, said of Amazon’s gadget flurry. “And they have the balance sheet and R&D dollars to take some risks.”
Many of the devices—you know, like an autonomous flying drone for your home—test the boundary between cool and creepy. Echo speakers’ dominance of the smart-speaker market shows Amazon is capable of making consumers more tolerant of things they might have initially approached with caution: Even though the speakers aren’t an always-open audio channel from your home to Amazon, they do regularly collect and send a considerable amount of audio.
The popularity of Amazon’s devices is driven in part by their low price. During last year’s tech antitrust hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin asked then-Chief Executive Jeff Bezos if Amazon sold the Echo speaker below cost, potentially stifling competition. “Not its list price, but it’s often on promotion,” Mr. Bezos said. “And sometimes, when it’s on promotion, it may be below cost.”
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The inexpensive devices contribute relatively little to the company’s profits, but are a gateway to shopping and other more profitable Amazon services, Mr. Newman said.
An Echo Dot costs about $50, but a Prime membership, which includes music you can play on Echo speakers and shows to stream on a Fire TV Stick, brings in $119 a year. And you can ask Alexa to order more potato chips from Amazon once you’ve emptied the bag. Features for children, such as Alexa’s bedtime reading and the $69-a-year Amazon Kids+ subscription for age-appropriate content, create a relationship with the brand early on. “That child could become a consumer themselves. There’s a long tail of lifetime value,” he said.
Amazon already announced some new hardware earlier this month. There’s an updated Kindle Paperwhite e-reader with a larger screen and battery, plus USB-C charging, as well as a set of Amazon-branded TVs with Alexa and the company’s Fire TV operating system built-in. Stay tuned for a roundup of more gadgets to come, after the midday event.
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Write to Nicole Nguyen at [email protected]
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